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"... In fact, isn't it true, sir, that not everyone in your administration is convinced that the Messiah will save us?""(after a pause, and comments to wrap up a plot point) Now, I can promise you this, Ms. Lerner, all of you, everyone in this room and everyone listening to my voice, that at some point over the next 10 months, all of us will entertain our worst fears and concerns. But I can also promise you this ... life will go on. We will prevail."
It's not much of a timesaver, writing Thoughts On as a series of observations rather than in paragraphs. At some point, I will return to the traditional style. Fragmented writing feels appropriate for Deep Impact, a movie that earns points for ambition, loses them for execution and ultimately passes for not being total junk. Would we expect anything less for the supposed thinking man's popcorn flick?
1. Leo (Elijah Wood) and Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) being the first characters seen is, in hindsight, more than a little rebellious. Test audiences hated the characters, resulting in their final screentime being reduced. It didn't help matters. Wood and Sobieski (who got the first close up) still received some of the movie's worst notices.
2. The premise of Deep Impact, that Earth faces an extinction-level event because of a huge comet, was not a surprise for 1998 moviegoers. Alas, nobody told screenwriters Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin, so we have to wait 20 minutes for Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni), reporter and adult child of divorce, to catch up.
3. Speaking of that, we know why Jenny works for MSNBC, right? It's because CNN thought it would be inappropriate to be a part of Deep Impact. This was obviously long before Jeff Zucker was on the scene. Blonde hair aside, Tea also wouldn't look right at Fox News. She's not enough of a Barbie type. Anyway, Jenny's investigation of why Treasury Secretary Rittenhouse (James Cromwell, a one-scene wonder, and one of five Oscar nominees or winners in the darn movie) resigned leads her to President Beck (Morgan Freeman, an Oscar winner) and the awful truth.
4. I wish more creativity went into Leoni's other story. Suppose Jason (Maximillian Schell, another Oscar winner) wasn't Jenny's estranged father, but the husband she's a trophy wife to? I would have kept Robin (Vanessa Redgrave, yet another Oscar winner) as Jason's ex and still had her regularly, uncomfortably interact with Jenny. Or if they had to be dad and daughter, then do something unexpected. Like incest.
5. Thirty minutes in, Beck reveals the Wolf-Beiderman comet's existence, introduces the hopefully world-saving astronauts including Capt. "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall, the last of the Oscar winners) and uses his dad voice to make America behave. Deep Impact was criticized for barely depicting how the public would panic amid the potential end of the world. The overall calm feels even more unrealistic in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Or maybe it feels especially realistic in the wake of people supposedly being over the disease. Anyway, I found it refresting that at least nobody in Deep Impact is claiming that the comet is just a hoax, Beck is restricting personal freedoms, etc.
6. We're now watching a movie about tolerating an older co-worker. Co-starring a pre-mogul Jon Favreau. Actually, it's a movie about tolerating older co-workers and ambitious co-workers. Surely you didn't think that Jenny wasn't going to take the brass ring when it was available, did you, Beth (Laura Innes)? To her credit, Jenny improves as she goes as a news anchor. Up in space, Fish babbles about the Mississippi River.
7. We've got more than an hour to go, so of course the mission to save the day fails. One "mole" doesn't go in deep enough. (That's what she said!) Adding injury to insult, Gus (Favreau) is thrown into space and Oren (Ron Eldard) is blinded. Not only that, the comet ended up getting split into two significant pieces!
8. Beck breaks out his dad voice again to explain that "now we have to make some decisions together." The new game plan has America and Russia teaming up for a missile bombardment to take out the comets. It can only be done at the 11th hour and success is not guaranteed. America's plan also involves having 1 million people live underground in Missouri as part of "our new Noah's Ark" until two years have passed and it's safe to come out. The saved will include 800,000 randomly chosen people to live alongside the 200,000 pre-selected "scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, soldiers and artists" (and campaign contributors, no doubt). Also, if you're 50 or older and not part of the 200,000, you're screwed. So long, Jason and Robin.
9. Leo decides to marry Sarah, because why not? Their wedding takes place at montage o'clock, alongside Beck standing alone in the Oval Office, Jenny reporting on worldwide panic and Robin deciding to commit suicide. Up in space, Oren and Fish belatedly bond and the old man reads Moby Dick to the young man.
10. Mimi Leder didn't write Deep Impact. She directed it for producers including David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck and Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately, Mimi received what I think was a disproportionate and sexist amount of attention or blame for the movie's tone. Janet Maslin: "directs with a distinct womanly touch." Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: "It's difficult to care about these people when Leder never asks them to furnish anything other than cheap, manufactured sentimentality." Lisa Schwarzbaum: "Even I felt like pawing the ground and chanting, 'Big bang! Big bang! Big bang!" That said, Leder wasn't immune from ego. Kenneth Turan's review mentioned her hope that people "will walk out of this movie reevaluating their lives and the choices they've made." It's not too hard to see why Armageddon ultimately made more money.
11. Yadda yadda, Leo couldn't get Sarah's family "aboard" the Ark. She can't bear to leave them, but she's also upset about being separated from Leo. (This is why teenagers shouldn't get married.) Jenny, who's been seltected to survive, learns that Robin's died. The moment was hilariously commemorated by O'Sullivan. "We see only her face as the personal tragedy slowly sinks in. What could have been a nice, subtle moment, however, is ruined by the fact that Leoni's emotive abilities do not extend above well-trained eyebrows."
12. Leo decides to go back for Sarah while in D.C., Jason is trying his damndest to win back Jenny. It's time to launch the nukes. Crap, they didn't do a damn thing. Beck brings back his dad voice for a real humdinger.
13. "Our missiles have failed. The comets are still headed for Earth, and there's nothing we can do to stop them. So, this is it. If the world does go on, it will not go on for everyone. We have now been able to calculate the comet's final trajectories, and we have determined where they're going to strike. The smaller of the two comets, Biederman, will hit first, somewhere in the Atlantic Seaboard, probably off the waters of Cape Hatteras, in just under 12 hours, at 4:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The impact of the comet is going to be ... well, disastrous. There will be a very large tidal wave moving quickly through the Atlantic Ocean. It'll be 100 feet high, travelling at 1,100 miles per hour. That's faster than the speed of sound. As the wave reaches shallow water, it's going to slow down, but the wave height, depending on the shelf off the coast will be anywhere from 1,000 to 3,500 feet high. Where the land is flat, the wave will wash inland, 600 to 700 miles. The wave will hit our nation's capital 40 minutes after impact. New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, all will be destroyed. If you have any means of escaping the path of this wave, leave now. The impact of the larger comet will be nothing less than an extinction level event. It will strike land in Western Canada, three hours after Biederman. Within a week, the skies will be dark with dust from the impact and they will stay dark for two years. All plant life will dead within ... four weeks. Animal life within ... a few months. So, that's it. Good luck to us all."
14. Luckily for humanity, the astronauts realize they can destroy Wolf. They're going to penetrate it and set off the nukes they're still carrying. This means suicide, of course, but as Andy (Mary McCormack) points out, "We'll all have high schools named after us."
15. The impact of Leo's search for Sarah is lessened by their old neighborhood clearly being on the backlot. Anyway, Jenny ensures that Beth and her daughter will survive while Leo reunites with Sarah and flees with her and her baby brother. Maslin observed that Deep Impact managed to have the teens be married with a child while apparently remaining virgins. Jenny reunites with Jason and they recall "a perfect, happy day."
16. Not one, but three summer of 1998 blockbusters depicted mass destruction in Manhattan. Deep Impact might just keep the lead and win over the anhiliation that took place in Independence Day. Critics in '98 howled over the killing off of what may be Bruce Weitz's character. He just had to read his newspaper.
16. "We'll never be closer to home than we are now." Aboard the Messiah, the astronauts say their farewells. "It's been a pleasure serving with you, Commander." "The honor's all mine, Andy." I'll admit it, I teared up when Oren talked to his namesake infant son. "Be good, Oren. Be good."
17. The Messiah saves all a substantial amount of people worldwide! We get one last chance to hear the dulcet tones of Big Daddy Beck.
"Cities fall, but they are rebuilt. And heroes die, but they are remembered. We honor them with every brick we lay, with every field we sow, with every child we comfort and then teach to rejoice in what we have been regiven. Our planet. Our home. So now, let us begin."
Recommended with reservations.
Thoughts:
-- "Look. I know you're just a reporter, but you used to be a person, right?"
-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $140.5 million domestically on an $80 million budget, this spent its first two weekends at No. 1, stayed in the top five for five weekends, the top 10 for two more weekends and ultimately ranked No. 8 for 1998.
-- Awards Watch: Deep Impact received only one Saturn nomination, for Best Science Fiction Film. It lost to the tie of Armageddon and Dark City. The two Earth in peril from above movies faced off for multiple Blockbuster Entertainment awards. Duvall and Freeman lost in the category of Best Science Fiction Actor to Bruce Willis. Leoni and Liv Tyler lost to Gillian Anderson for The X-Files. Wood and Billy Bob Thornton lost in the supporting actor category to Ben Affleck. Because there weren't enough supporting actresses in science fiction, Redgrave got moved to "action/adventure" (which is hilarious, considering her material in this movie), where she lost to Rene Russo for Lethal Weapon 4. Deep Impact avoided getting any Razzie nominations, but it was up at the Stinkers for the screenplay (which lost to Godzilla) and Leoni as a supporting actress (she lost to Lacey Chabert for Lost in Space). There was one prominent win, for Freeman. He received the NAACP Image Award for Best Supporting Actor.
-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "Tries with moderate success to be more than just the sum of its special effects," Turan wrote. Rita Kempley disliked the finale. "(It's) far too unimaginatively wrought to merit the mind-numbing wait." O'Sullivan disliked the movie altogether: "An underwhelming disappointment. ... (the heartwarming moments are) so false that you'll likely gag with anger at the lump in your throat." Duane Bygre, The Hollywood Reporter: "It drags considerably, and mainstream action audiences are likely to find it tedious and undeniably old-fashioned. ... What is most intriguing (is the) respectful wisdom that mankind will survive despite such an awesome calamity."
-- Critic's Corner, Freeman: "So effectively presidential than you can't imagine voting for anyone else. No, not even Harrison Ford," Turan wrote. Schwarzbaum agreed, saying "he's so blessedly dignified in the job."
-- Critic's Corner, Leoni: "(Her) eyes seem on the verge of tears almost throughout, and her sad, brittle demeanor is an odd object of focus for such a high-powered picture," observed Todd McCarthy, Variety. She did receive a good notice from Ginia Bellafante, Entertainment Weekly's video reviewer. "Perfectly cast ... is Tea Leoni, who possesses a natural I-can-play-with-the-boys swagger."
-- Critic's Corner, Wood and Sobieski: "Bland" and "blander," Kempley wrote. "Potentially heart-tugging, (their) subplot is played out in the hokiest, most predictable manner, one that panders directly to the teen audience," McCarthy wrote.
-- Hey, It's ...!: Mike O'Malley, Charles Martin Smith, Dougray Scott, Mark Moses, Concetta Tomei, Rya Kihlstedt, Richard Schiff, Denise Crosby, Jason Dohring, Blair Underwood and Kurtwood Smith.
-- Fanservice Junction: Fish's hot sons. What can I say? I like men in uniforms.
-- "You know, you're gonna have sex a lot more now than anyone else in our class. ... Famous people always get sex, Mr. Perry. That's the main reason it's good to be famous."
-- Next: Quest for Camelot. On deck: The Horse Whisperer.
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